


Chrysanthemums

by Snowbazzz_lyf



Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Character Death, Heavy Angst, M/M, POV Second Person, Penny lives in America, Post-Watford (Simon Snow), Simon is Dead, baz is depressed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-02-10 19:31:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18666922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snowbazzz_lyf/pseuds/Snowbazzz_lyf
Summary: “This wasn't supposed to end like this.” He murmurs finally, his voice hoarse and scratchy. “I was the one who was supposed to die. Not you. Never you. Never ever you, Simon.”---Simon Snow had always been brave and selfless. So brave and so selfless, that he had not thought twice before he willingly sacrificed his life to save the world of Mages.But sacrifices like that not only make the world a better place, but it also leaves people heartbroken. Especially the ones who had never expected that.After Simon's death, Baz was devastated. After two years, he still is. He goes to the cemetery for a short visit on Simon's second death anniversary.A very very very angsty one shot.





	Chrysanthemums

**Author's Note:**

> So, my second fanfiction and another one shot which is angsty as fuck. So I dunno, enjoy, I guess?

 

_“_ _Help, I lost myself again..._ _”_

It's quite early in the morning when a lean, tall figure enters the cemetery. Completely dressed in black, it is moving at a slow deliberate pace, like each step has been thoroughly calculated. There is no hurry in his steps - for it's a he - and the farther he moves, the slower he gets, until he stops completely in front of a tombstone.

It's new, made completely out of white marble and it blends in well with the thick white snow around it. The man standing in front of the tombstone gazes at it for a few moments, his breathing becoming shallow, before placing the chrysanthemums he had been holding in his thin, pale and long fingers. His hands tremble the entire time when he does that, and the trembling is not because of the bitter cold.

Baz gulps, holding back a sob and a single tear flows down his face. He pushes his hands inside his coat pocket, clenching and unclenching them, his fingernails digging into his palms. Then he crouches down and gazes at the tombstone in front of him.

He visits it every week, since he knows that even if he badly wants to visit it every day, every hour, just stay close to it every minute, he cannot. He will go mad with grief.

It's especially painful for him today, because today is the day when his world fell apart, two years ago. The pain and heartbreak evident on his face, the hollowness in his eyes, show that he cannot even muster up the courage to utter even a sound.

_Simon Snow_ , the tombstone reads, _June 21 1997 - December 25 2015._ _Someone so selfless, someone so brave, this world did not deserve someone as beautiful as you._

Baz reads the epitaph again and again. Bunce had got that inscribed, and he thinks he cannot agree more. The world is such a cruel and ugly place. And Simon had been an angel, too good for this world. Too good for anyone, anybody, anything. And yet, this world who had never given anything to Simon, was now a better place, at least for mages, because of him. They had been unworthy of someone like him. Someone like Simon Snow.

“This wasn't supposed to end like this.” He murmurs finally, his voice hoarse and scratchy. “I was the one who was supposed to die. Not you. Never you. Never _ever_ you, Simon.”

His words are met with an empty and hollow silence, broken only by the wind that is blowing, cutting through the thick December air.

“Never ever you, Simon.” He says, again.

Baz thinks back to the time when he had got kidnapped, when the only thing that had kept him from giving up entirely, losing his life, was Simon and his golden skin and his blue eyes and his bronze curls. The fact that Simon was alive and safe. That even though Simon would might not have ever loved him back, he had still held onto the only thing he was sure of: His love for Simon.

He does not know what keeps him alive these days. How he movs and how he breathes and how he eats. There is an emptiness in everything he does, everywhere he goes. And he knows nothing would ever be able to fill the void Simon's death has left.

_“What I can promise, Snow, is to weep over your corpse.”_

_“Or not,” he had said._

_“Fine, I’ll weep in privacy when the day arrives.”_

Baz almost laughs at the sudden memory before a sharp pang of sorrow replaces it. He had never wanted it to be the way he had said to Simon. He had wanted it to be him. He had wanted himself to lose, so that Simon could win, could live.

And weeping in privacy? His grief had been anything but private. Simon had died in front of his eyes and Baz had wept, holding onto his corpse, cursing the entire universe, repeating Simon's name, hoping that maybe the chant would wake him up. It hadn't worked. He remembers how he had kissed his forehead, as he had cried bitterly, and how for once, Simon's soft and freckled  skin had not been warm.

And he had made a spectacle of himself at his funeral, alright. His tears had never stopped and he had obstinately refused to leave the cemetery for a very long time. Fiona and Penny had to drag him away.

And Penny... She no longer lives there, she shifted to America as soon as she could. She says that she did not have the will to live there, a place where Simon had once lived and breathed. Baz had briefly considered leaving too, but the thought of leaving Simon behind had left him nauseated.

Baz and Penny are still very good friends, they regularly Skype and talk. But their conversations never involve Simon. It is an unspoken agreement between the two of them to not talk about him. Because they both know it is too painful, neither of them is ever able to hold back their tears whenever Simon is bought up.

Baz knows it is not going to be this way forever. That one day, there will come a time when he and Penny would be able to talk about Simon in a light hearted tone, without breaking down, with soft smiles and fond laughter like they would actually be talking about some old friend who moved away or something, not a person who had been a part of their universe for a long time. Maybe they would do that, one day. But it is still too new, too raw, too painful for both of them now.

Sometimes Penny asks him if any guy has caught his eye, but she knows it's fruitless. No guy is Simon Snow. No guy ever would be Simon Snow. Baz had loved Simon hopelessly for three years, and he knows that he will love Simon hopelessly for the rest of his life.

“Penny called me last week, Simon.” Baz whispers. “She said that she is fine and she doing well at her Uni. I am doing well too. Father is fine, Daphne is fine. Fiona is good too. Yeah.”

He grows quiet for a moment.

“Cook Pritchard sent me some sour cherry scones the other day and I...” his voice is faltering, like he cannot bring himself to say more. “And I remembered how much you loved them. You loved them, didn't you?”

Silence.

“Yeah you did.” He whispers, answering his own question. “You really did.”

The quiet is heavy and sorrowful and Baz finally starts weeping, unable to control his emotions anymore. His body is shaking with soft, muffled sobs and tears are flowing down his pale face.

“Goddammit Simon.” His tone is anguished. “Why did you have to die? Why? Why couldn't you have left it as it was? We would have had handled it. Done something about it. Anything. Anything. We had it all figured out, the humdrum, we had it figured out. We would have had found a solution to. Why did you... Why did you sacrifice yourself?”

This is not the first time Baz has asked this question. He asks it every week, trying to get an answer and never getting any.

He leans his head against the tombstone, his tears falling down his face into the flowers he had placed, where they glisten like crystals.

“Fuck you.” He says after an eternity has passed, pounding a fist on the frozen ground. “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.”

Again, he is crying.

“I wish- I wish I was dead. I wish you had never loved me, just hated me like I had thought you did. I wish I had arrived earlier that day, I could have saved you. I wish you were alive. Alive like you always had been.”

Simon had been so alive, Baz thinks, he had gotten his share of it and that was why he was supposed to be the one who lived in the end.

Sometimes Baz thinks that he still is. Alive. Because his memory is a living entity, haunting him, hurting him yet soothing him. The heartache would lessen at times, when Baz would think about Simon's innocent and guileless smiles. And then it would return in full force because Simon would never smile again.

And he thinks of the night when Simon had kissed him and kissed him and kissed him so much that his lips had become swollen. Every so often, he wishes that it should have never happened. Because sometimes, in the middle of the night, he wakes up with the ghost of Simon's lips on his own and the misery becomes too much for him to handle.

“Maybe I am already dead.” Baz says. “I did not die the day, I was Turned. I died the day you left, you know? My heart lies there, right next to you.”

He is hugging himself tightly, not because he is cold, but because he needs comfort. And he knows he cannot get that.

“Simon, I...” he doesn't say more for a long time. He just sobs into his hands, quietly.

“I love you.” he says, the words slipping past his lips. “I love you so much Simon. I still do. I-” his words are getting interrupted by his crying. “I love you.”

He stays there for another few minutes, trying and failing to compose himself. Finally he gets up and kisses his palm and then presses it on the tombstone.

“I will visit again.” He says, his voice wavering. There is a pause and he says it again, “I love you.”

Then he turns and leaves, drawing his coat around himself tightly, not letting anybody see his tears. Baz does not turn back to look at the tomb.

A bronze haired boy stares after him, as he sits cross legged on the snow, unbothered by the cold, near the tomb and his fingers toy with the flower petals absentmindedly.

“I love you too, Baz." He whispers, his voice audible only to the wind. “I love you too.”

_“...but I remember you.”_

 

**Author's Note:**

> How did you like it? Please comment! And yes, it was sort of inspired by Billie Eilish's Six Feet Under.


End file.
